First Strike (15 page)

“Thank you,” Lady Dalsha said. Perhaps she could win back a little honour through her report, and her thoughts on how to combat the human technology. Maybe the Empress would even spare her life. “I will do as you wish.”

* * *

The President of the United States stared into the camera, putting every ounce of his experience into maintaining the solemn, grave and yet optimistic expression that the situation demanded. It wasn't easy. People said that the President was the most powerful man in the world, and there was a certain amount of truth in that saying, but he was hardly the most powerful man in the galaxy. The Empress of the Hegemony wielded more power than anyone on Earth could match, commanding fleets that could turn Earth’s surface into radioactive ash if she willed it to be done. Earth had never quite recovered from discovering that humanity wasn't alone in the universe. There were times when the President felt that humanity was sinking towards self-inflicted destruction even without the Hegemony.

But then, humanity was really nothing more than a microstate to the Galactics. That realisation had stunned millions of humans. They weren't just unimportant, but insignificant, barely worthy of consideration. Fifteen years of effort had gone into changing that, into building humanity up into a minor galactic power, and yet the culture shock had never quite gone away. Earth had slipped into a siege mentality and a growing paranoia about the universe outside. Americans were stockpiling guns and building bomb shelters, shelters that would provide little protection if the planet was blown apart by antimatter torpedoes. And yet any politician who tried to get in the way was crushed. The panic was too strong to be easily controlled.

“My fellow Americans,” he said. They’d cleared a slot for him on
 
every
 
television, radio and internet channel in America. Galactic-level computers had changed the internet beyond recognition, making it the most powerful medium for sharing ideas in history. They were far harder to censor or block than anything produced by mere humans. “I come to you with grave news. The long-expected war between humanity and the Hegemony has finally broken out.”

His advisors had debated endlessly over the question of admitting that human ships had fired the first shots in the war. The President could understand their feelings; Americans liked wars to be honest and open, even though wars had never been either. Pearl Harbour and 9/11 had both been sneak attacks perpetrated against America and both had galvanised the country. But then, so had the loss of Terra Nova. A good third of the planet’s population was American.

“Human ships have liberated Terra Nova from alien rule,” he continued. “The first battle was a stunning success. Humans have shown the Galactics that we cannot be taken lightly.”

He paused. “But wars are not won by one victory alone. This will be a long hard struggle, a war that will define the future of both Earth and the Hegemony. I ask you all to pray for the success of the gallant Federation Navy, fighting to defend Earth, and for the American soldiers who will soon be joining the Federation Marines on alien planets. And I ask you to pray that we will emerge victorious from this war, secure in our place in the universe and confident that we will not be bullied and eventually enslaved by an alien race. God bless America.”

The camera clicked off and the President relaxed, wiping his brow. God alone knew what would happen when the Hegemony responded to the attack, but he was sure that it would be bad – and if humanity wasn't ready, the devastation could be immense. He felt powerless to affect events, even though he was the President of the United States of America. No one truly realised just how much power the Federation Navy had, not until it had gone to war. The divided command structure gave the CNO remarkable latitude to fight the war as he saw fit.

At least we have a good man in charge
, he told himself, and hoped that he was right.

He stepped into the briefing room and looked down at his public relations staff, the men and women who monitored public opinion and tried to urge him to surf the shifting tides through to win the next election. Half of them were already tapping away at laptops, reading internet forums and trying to put together a consensus on how the public was reacting to the news. The President was less impressed. The internet was a shifting maze of attitudes that seemed exaggerated through anonymity. No doubt there were already trolls sneering at his message online.

“The first results are already in,” the youngest member of the group said. “People are scared, but also confident. They want victory and they believe that we can win it.”

“Of course,” the President said dryly. It would be days before they had a
 
real
 
picture of how the country was feeling. “So do we.”
 

“They used to take children away to the garrison,” Beverly Troy said. She was around forty years old, according to the colonist database Adrienne had downloaded before leaving
 
Wellington
, but she looked at least sixty. Many of the other colonists who had lived through five years of hell looked just as bad, if not worse. Some of them had fallen ill and died because they didn't have the right diet. “We all knew what they were doing with them, but we told ourselves that we didn’t, that the kids were just visiting… oh God!”

She started to sob, noisily. “My little Eric went into the garrison,” she said, between sobs. “He was only seven years old when they took him and… and I prayed that he’d be fine, that he’d be untouched, but he was such a pretty boy. They’d love him! Where is he? Was he alive or dead or did you put him out of his misery… I need to know!”

Adrienne shook her head tiredly as the woman kept sobbing. The Funks had been brutal, stamping down hard on any bursts of independences from their human captives, but they hadn't been outrageously cruel, at least not by their own standards. But the human collaborators, the ones who had served the Funks willingly, had indulged themselves in activities unthinkable to a sane mind. They’d preyed on men, women and – worst of all – children, to the point where the Funk troops were almost popular. No one had been able to tell if the Funks had allowed it on purpose or if it had been a simple oversight, but it hardly mattered. No wonder the colonists wanted to tear the collaborators limb from limb.

Three days after the battle, the fires were finally out and workers were starting to repair some of the damaged buildings. Others were beyond repair and would have to be demolished and replaced by new construction. The colonists had set to work with a will, although the Navy hadn't tried to hide the fact that the Funks might slip back in and occupy Terra Nova for the second time. Barbie had been vague on precisely how many Federation Navy ships had been damaged or destroyed in the battle, but Adrienne didn't need precise figures to know that the combined navy was weaker than the Hegemony. That had been one insight that wouldn't be going into her reports. The Funks would no doubt listen to human broadcasts with as much interest as humans listened to theirs and it wouldn’t do to give them any idea of loss rates.

Down the street, most of the Funk prisoners were being marched out of the city, towards a POW camp that had been established several miles from human settlements. Adrienne found it hard to understand why the military would want to keep the aliens alive – instead of allowing the locals to throw rocks at them endlessly – but she supposed that they had their reasons. Some of the reporters had suggested leaving the prisoners in the city as human shields –
 
alien
 
shields, technically – before being shouted down by the others. There was not a shred of evidence to suggest that the Funks cared one whit about the safety of their own civilians. The battle they’d fought against the Marines had showed a frightening lack of concern for their own lives, let alone human lives. And besides, it would look very bad to the other Galactics.

She walked closer, studying them with genuine interest. Earth had played host to thousands of aliens over the last fifteen years – the Federation had worked hard to attract aliens with technical skills humans needed – but a surprisingly few number of humans had seen an alien in person. Adrienne had never seen a Funk before, even though they were humanity’s main tormentors. They didn't look very intimidating now, with Marine guns trained on their backs. If they’d had tails, they would have been dragging them through the dirt. They’d been defeated and it showed.

A handful of locals were watching from the other side of the street. Two of them looked old enough to remember the days before First Contact; the other three were young children, barely older than the colony itself. A few more years and Howell and his gang of sadists might have come calling to take the children away to their den. Adrienne ambled over towards them and held up her press card. The reporters had been wandering the city ever since it had been declared safe, collecting interviews from the colonists. Everyone seemed to have a story to tell.

But not all of them would talk. Some were fearful that the Funks would come back, although they'd have to start rebuilding the collaborator force from scratch. Others were frightened that their peers would deem their own little compromises collaboration; deprived of their main target, the mobs were turning on anyone who had been forced to work with the Funks. There was even another POW camp nearby for rioters who refused to listen to reason, forcing the Marines to arrest them. And then there were people who just wanted to put the whole nightmare behind them as quickly as possible.

“They took my brother away one day,” the woman said. She looked down at the ground, sadly. “Howell’s men said that he was tied into the resistance, that he’d been responsible for planting bombs in the city. I never knew if that was true, but I never saw him again. They killed him…”

Her husband took her hand, looking up reproachfully at the reporter who had intruded into their private grief. Adrienne understood; there might never be any answers for those who had lost friends and relatives to the Funks and their collaborators. Howell’s men had destroyed their records when the Marines landed, while the Funks hadn't bothered to keep any proper records of humans they’d executed during the occupation. Most of the bodies had been destroyed, or buried somewhere without a marker. Local rumour said that the Funks had eaten the bodies, but Adrienne hoped that that was just a sick joke. Humans had always made up horrifying tales about their enemies to justify their hatred.

“I wish I could find out,” Adrienne said. Reporters had a great deal of access, more than most people realised. But she couldn't find records that weren't there. “I could ask...”

“If you would,” the woman said, but it was clear that she didn't expect anything to work. Adrienne couldn't blame her. “His name was Cameron Williams, but everyone called him Buck. It used to be a joke before the end of the world. He used to love bucking the rules...”

Adrienne looked at the children, and then turned and walked away, leaving them to their grief. They'd been traumatized by the occupation, as had every other human on the planet – and Earth itself would be shocked when the full truth was released. She’d already had two brief messages from Ward, one congratulating her on a piece that had been released just after the President’s speech to the nation and the other ordering her to attach herself to Admiral Sampson and send stories and feature articles. Unfortunately, Admiral Sampson’s aide had merely promised to pass on the request and had never got back to her. The military knew the importance of cooperating with the press, but the Admiral was likely to be very busy. There was a war on, after all.

The faces of the woman and her children kept flickering through her imagination later that afternoon, when she was allowed into the detention center run by the Marines. Unlike the POW camp for Funks, the detention center for collaborators kept them separated from each other by wire, preventing some of the suspected collaborators from murdering others. At least one person had claimed to be a collaborator, according to rumour, so he’d have a chance at murdering the bastard who had raped and killed his sister. He would have succeeded if it hadn't been for a meddling Marine.

A small investigation team had been charged with gathering evidence to use against the collaborators, confirming and quantifying their guilt. Those who had collaborated willingly, or engaged in atrocities, would face the hangman once they had been tried, or dispatched to Luna Penal Colony. The others, the ones who had been forced into collaborating, would be tried more leniently than the willing collaborators. But that probably wouldn't satisfy their enemies on Terra Nova.

“It’s something of a legal gray area,” the Marine Legal Officer explained, in the small office he’d taken from a Funk. It was a vaguely disconcerting place, close enough to what a human would find comfortable for the oddities to stand out. “You see, the Federation Charter strongly restricts where the Federation has jurisdiction – no one in the national governments wanted to create a world government that would eventually be able to dictate to them, not unlike the US Federal government dictating to the states. A typical compromise and one that probably would have bitten us on the ass sooner or later, even without the Funks. The Federation does have jurisdiction over Terra Nova, but there is no provision for overseeing criminal trials, let alone trials for treason and collaboration. It’s not even certain if we could legally
 
charge
 
them with anything.”

“But that's insane,” Adrienne protested. “Surely there are rules...”

“There are, but precisely where those rules interact is the question,” the Legal Officer said. “When I was a jarhead, I was bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice – I volunteered, so there was no question about the UCMJ applying to me. When I requested transfer to the Federation Marines, I moved to the Federation Code, which was partly based on the UCMJ anyway. But in both cases I volunteered to accept entering that particular sphere.

“But treason against Earth isn't on the statue books,” he added. “No national government wanted the Federation deciding what constituted treason. Who knew what would happen if that particular can of worms was torn open? Not them, that’s for sure. Now, Terra Nova had – has - a limited criminal code dreamed up by the idealists who spearheaded the colonisation project, but it doesn't include treason and collaboration. No one considered the possibility when they started settling the planet.”

He grinned. “Confused, yet?”

Adrienne nodded. “Yes,” she said, bluntly. “We went to war without knowing what we were going to do to collaborators.”

“That always happens, every time something changes,” the Legal Officer assured her. “I think that, technically, our best choice would be to charge them under national laws against treason – they’re still citizens of their home nations, even if they live here. Luckily, none of the children are old enough to be put on trial – they’d have to be tried under Terra Nova’s law and that…”

“Doesn’t cover it,” Adrienne said, impatiently. “So...what is going to happen to them?”

“The spooks are currently picking through the prisoners’ brains,” the Legal Officer said. “Those who cooperate will have it entered in their records – perhaps they will be offered life imprisonment instead of execution. The others...will be charged once we figure out which body of law we can charge them under and put on trial. Whatever else happens, the victims will demand justice.

“One possible thought is convening courts here, with Admiral Sampson as the judge,” he added. “If you squint at the regulations in the right way, it would be just about legal and quicker than anything else. But I don’t think that national governments are going to go for it – it would set a dangerous precedent. An alternative is convening a trial here with a local jury, at least for the ones who have committed crimes that
 
can
 
be charged under the local legal code. Getting an unbiased jury, on the other hand, might be a little tricky.”

“I don’t envy you,” Adrienne said. “Should I write articles complaining about the lack of anything to bring the bastards to justice?”

“Hard cases make bad law,” the Legal Officer quoted. “And so does political pressure to get laws passed quickly without considering the consequences. They tend to make a lot of money for lawyers.”

“You
 
are
 
a lawyer,” Adrienne said.

“I rest my case,” the Legal Officer countered, with a grin that Adrienne would have found charming under other circumstances. “But…”

He looked up. “Hey, do you want to
 
see
 
them?”

Adrienne nodded, allowing him to turn on a monitor screen. “I’m not entirely sure why the Funks built this place,” he admitted. “It was largely abandoned by the time we landed and the locals say that no one was taken here for at least six months. But it not only keeps several hundred prisoners in confinement, it allows us to watch them constantly. That one there” – he switched the screen to display a single prisoner – “is Howell. The evidence we collected just on the first day will be enough to justify his execution under local law, even if he is never charged with treason. We won’t even need the kids we found in his quarters to testify against him.”

He shrugged. “And why did he do it?

“Apparently, if you believe him, he never got a break,” he added, sardonically. “I can see why he might feel that way, right up until the moment I realise that he never even
 
tried
 
to succeed. He thought that success came automatically; he never realised that he had to learn and work and work damn hard. Maybe he was always twisted, maybe he was slowly twisted by bitterness… I don’t know or care. He lost his right to freedom and life when he started molesting kids and tormenting their parents. Damn the bastard to hell.”

“He doesn't look very impressive,” Adrienne said, after a moment.

“They never do,” the Legal Officer said. “I did some
 
pro bono
 
work during downtime between tours; one of the cases I handled was a group of Klansmen who’d been caught red-handed in the process of burning down a black church. None of them looked impressive; some were fat, some were disabled… one had a missing chin. The great champions of the white race were among its least healthy members.